It's Only A Matter Of Time Before The Washington Redskins Change Their Name

John McQuaid
, ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Here’s a prediction: The Washington Redskins' name will be changed. Despite the resistance of Dan Snyder, the team’s owner, public pressure to replace it is mounting and will eventually prove irresistible. The only question is when.

In the meantime, though, the fight over the name continues. The latest development: two members of Congress, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, a Democrat and chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, and Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a Republican who is a member of the Chickasaw tribe, sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell urging him to take a stand in favor of changing the name. "The National Football League can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur,” the letter says.

The NFL is struggling to face a lot of uncomfortable new realities as the 21st century intrudes. There is an epidemic of long-term brain injuries among retired players, but some question changes to address it as a threat to the game’s character. On Sunday, prospective draft choice Michael Sam announced he is gay; if picked he’d be the first openly gay pro football player. Publicly, the league was encouraging; anonymously, some team sources started tearing him down and grumbling about disruptions in the locker room.

Of these issues, the question of the Redskins’ name should be the easiest. It's an aggravation the league doesn't need.

Snyder could act as a leader here, acknowledge the obvious, and move forward. Instead, he decided to make this a pitched battle in the Culture Wars. He’s been paying for political messaging advice from Republican-allied consultants Ari Fleischer, Frank Luntz, and George Allen. (The latter lost a Virginia Senate race after he called a campaign operative for his opponent by a racial slur.) Lanny Davis, Democrat-for-hire, is also in the mix. The response (scroll to the bottom) to the Cantwell-Cole letter from the Redskins’ spokesman Tony Wyllie has a political consultant’s hard-edged approach:

With all the important issues Congress has to deal with such as a war in Afghanistan to deficits to health care, don't they have more important issues to worry about than a football team's name? And given the fact that the name of Oklahoma means 'Red People' in Choctaw, this request is a little ironic.

If Snyder was truly interested in defending a tradition, he’d have his employees respect and engage the team’s critics. But that’s not what happening here; the aim is to sow division, not consensus; to rile people up, not to try to argue the issues. But this is America, and there’s money involved; being asked to take sides was inevitable. Let’s not pretend this is a genuine debate; as the “Oklahoma” reference indicates, the chosen arguments for retaining the name sound increasingly silly.

There are some culture war issues, such as abortion, where differences of opinion are stark and truly matter. There are others, such as same-sex marriage (and being openly gay in professional sports) in which opinions are changing fast, effecting a positive social transformation. The Redskins’ name issue falls into the latter category. It’s taken decades for American society to develop an intolerance for racial and ethnic slurs. Acknowledging the ugly history behind a slur, and not just its subsequent prettification, is healthy. The opposition to the name has been gathering steam; voices ranging from Bob Costas to Charles Krauthammer have argued it’s time for a change. The situation is going to grow increasingly untenable for the NFL and Snyder. If they are smart, they will acknowledge their critics have a point and proceed from there.